anti-fascism

New Statesman

About:

The New Statesman was founded over a series of gatherings hosted by Fabianists Beatrice and Sidney Webb whose aim was to disseminate socialist and collectivist ideas among the middle classes. Bernard Shaw, among others, donated money to fund the launch of the magazine. The tone of the magazine in its formative years is described on its website as ‘didactic’ and ‘no-nonsense’. Some two years after its launch, its circulation was second only to that of the Spectator among sixpenny weeklies.

As Christopher Hitchens writes in his introduction to Lines of Dissent, ‘embedded in the Fabian idea was an impression of British greatness’ – the logical conclusion of which was an imperialist stance (Howe, pp. 6-7). It was Kingsley Martin, who became editor in the early 1930s, who turned the paper largely away from this stance. Martin also oversaw the take-over of the Nation and Athenaeum, a magazine that had published writing by some of Britain’s most renowned writers of the early twentieth century, in 1931, and of the Weekend Review in 1934.

There are articles and reviews of books on the political situation in India throughout the four decades of the magazine. In the 1930s and especially the 1940s, increasing numbers of books (including fiction) by South Asians are reviewed, and one or two South Asians begin to contribute reviews or articles themselves.

Example:

de Zoete, Beryl, ‘An Indian Ballet’, review of Sakuntala ballet at the Embassy Theatre, New Statesman and Nation (6 April 1946), p. 245

Other names:

New Statesman and Nation (from 1931)

Secondary works:

Howe, Stephen (ed.), Lines of Dissent: Writing from the New Statesman, 1913–1988 (London: Verso, 1988)

Hyam, Edward, The New Statesman: The History of the First Fifty Years, 1913–1963 (London: Longmans, 1963)

http://www.newstatesman.com

Content:

In this review, Beryl de Zoete commends the performance of Sakuntala, commenting on its success in bringing together 'western' and 'eastern' cultural traditions and European and Indian dancers and musicians (including Narayana Menon, who directs an orchestra of Indian instruments), and on its 'warm reception' by the British public.

Date began:

12 Apr 1913

Extract:

This is the most successful effort hitherto made by West to meet East in the sphere of dance. Sakuntala is a ballet on the theme of Kalidasa’s famous dream, and is performed chiefly by Europeans, in an Indian dance-idiom. The idiom sometimes proves beyond their physical capacities, especially with regard to head and neck movements and facial expression, just as certain sounds in a foreign languages are almost impossible to acquire…Retna Mohini, a Javanese dancer who many will remember as Ram Gopal’s principal partner, introduces, of course, a very different standard of perfection, but her beautiful dances form part of a court entertainment, so do not clash too violently with the style of the Europeans. The same may be said of Rekha Menon, who, though not so fine or experienced a dancer as Retna Mohini, is a charming and authentic Indian dancer.

Key Individuals' Details:

Editors: Clifford Sharp (1913-30), Kingsley Martin (1931-60).

Relevance:

This ‘mainstream’ British magazine’s positive engagement with the production of an Indian ballet is indicative of a degree of openness to South Asian cultural production in Britain. This said, the fact that the majority of the dancers were European suggests a degree of cultural ‘translation’ in the production of the ballet, perhaps rendering it more accessible to its British audience and critics. While the ballet could be seen as an example of an emergent hybridized proto-British Asian culture, it appears to be conceived by the critic as the combination of two distinct cultures rather than as an original syncretic form. This is evidenced in particular by the allusion to the way in which the ballet avoids a clash between the Asian and European dancers.

Connections:

Contributors: C. F. Andrews, Clive Bell, H. Belloc, H. N. Brailsford, Marcus Cunliffe, Emil Davis, Havelock Ellis, Lionel Fielden, Bernard Fonseca, Roger Fry, David Garnett, Frank Hauser, Desmond Hawkins, Syud Hossain, C. E. M. Joad, Fredoon Kabraji, Desmond MacCarthy, Thomas Sturge Moore, R. G. Pradan, V. S. Pritchett, Peter Quennell, Lajpat Rai, John Richardson, Paul Robeson, Shapurji Saklatvala, Ikbal Ali Shah, George Bernard Shaw, Khushwant Singh, M. J. Tambimuttu, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Jinnadasa Vijaya-Tunga, Beatrice Webb, Sidney Webb, Leonard Woolf, Beryl de Zoete.

Archive source:

New Statesman, Special Collections, University of Sussex

Books Reviewed Include:

Ali, Ahmed, Twilight in Delhi (London: Hogarth). Reviewed by Desmond Hawkins.

Anand, Mulk Raj, Across the Black Waters (London: Lawrence & Wishart). Reviewed by Desmond Hawkins.

Anand, Mulk Raj, The Coolie (London: Lawrence & Wishart). Reviewed by Peter Quennell.

Anand, Mulk Raj, Two Leaves and a Bud (London: Lawrence & Wishart). Reviewed by ‘S. K.’.

Dutt, R. Palme, India Today (London: Gollancz). Reviewed by H. N. Brailsford.

Dutt, Toru, Life and Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Kabraji, Fredoon (ed.) The Strange Adventure: An Anthology of Poems in English by Indians (London: New Indian Publishing). Reviewed by H. N. Brailsford.

Karaka, D. F., Betrayal in India (London: Gollancz). Reviewed by Bernard Fonseca.

Menen, Aubrey, The Backward Bride (London: Chatto). Reviewed by Frank Hauser.

Menon, V. K. Krishna et al., The Condition of India. Reviewed by C. F. Andrews.

Narayan, R. K., The Batchelor of Arts (London: Nelson). Reviewed by Desmond Shawe-Taylor.

Shah, Ikbal Ali, Islamic Sufism (Rider). Reviewed by J. Vijaya-Tunga.

Sister Nivedita and Coomaraswamy, Ananda, Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists (London: Harrap)

Rajan, B., (ed.) Modern American Poetry: Focus Five (London: Dennis Dobson). Reviewed by Marcus Cunliffe.

Rama Rau, Santha, Home to India (London: Gollancz). Reviewed by Lionel Fielden.

Shelvankar, K. S., The Indian Problem (London: Penguin). Reviewed by H. N. Brailsford.

Singh, Khushwant, The Mark of Vishnu (London: Saturn Press). Reviewed by John Richardson.

Tagore, Rabindranath, Gitanjali, The Home and the World and Gora (London: Macmillan)

Thompson, E. J., Rabindranath Tagore (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Locations

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Sylvia Pankhurst

About:

Born in Old Trafford in 1882, Sylvia Pankhurst was influenced in her youth by the political activism of her parents, Emmeline and Richard Marsden Pankhurst, who were members of the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party and helped establish the Women’s Franchise League. Wanting to become an artist, she attended Manchester Art School and, from 1904, Chelsea’s Royal College of Art. Her work, which combined socialist realism and Pre-Raphaelite allegory, was influenced by her art teacher, Walter Crane. Following Pankhurst’s arrival in London, her parents’ friend, Keir Hardie, became an important figure in her life. On his return from visiting India in 1909, he discussed with her his findings and opinions. Increasingly involved with the Women’s Social and Political Union, Pankhurst devoted her energies from 1906 onward to fighting for women’s suffrage, becoming known for her militancy. Using journalism to fund her activism, she wrote a series of articles on women’s labour for the WSPU newspaper, Votes for Women, went to America on a lecture tour, and in 1911 published The Suffragette on the movement’s history.

A committed socialist, Pankhurst became involved with working women in London’s East End, and supported George Lansbury MP when he stood for re-election in Bromley-by-Bow on a women’s suffrage ticket. In 1913 she established the militant East London Federation of Suffragettes, which supported trade union struggles including the Dublin lock-out. Pankhurst founded the Woman’s Dreadnought in 1914, later renamed the Workers' Dreadnought, through which she came into contact with Rajani Palme Dutt, who contributed articles to the paper from 1917 until her split with the Communist Party in 1921.

During the First World War she led anti-war campaigns, continued her social welfare work, and began to support revolutionary movements. She met Lenin after the war and, in 1920, helped form the British Communist Party from which she was later expelled. In 1924 she moved to Red Cottage in Woodford Green, where she was joined by Silvio Erasmus Corio, an Italian exile who had briefly converted to Islam in the early 1920s. At this time she wrote India and the Earthly Paradise, a ‘romantic Communist’ contribution to Indian nationalism which ‘may have been the last result of her contacts with fringe elements of that movement’ and was published in Bombay in 1926 (Romero, p. 179). Pankhurst named R. N. Chaudry as a source for the book. It is possible that the seminars she organized with Nora Smythe while living at Red Cottage brought her into contact with ‘like-minded Indians’ (Romero, p. 179). Pankhurst’s path crossed with that of Dhanvanthi Rama Rau a little later, in 1929, when Rama Rau gave an impassioned speech disputing the right of British women ignorant of the realities of India to organize a Conference on Indian Social Evils (Rama Rau, pp. 168-172). Rama Rau recalls being ‘deeply touched’ by remarks Pankhurst made in response (Rama Rau, p. 172).

She gave birth to her only child, Richard Keir Pethick, in 1927. In the 1930s Pankhurst committed herself to promoting peace, fighting fascism, assisting Jewish refugees and supporting Spanish republicans. Ethiopian independence became a consuming concern following the Italian invasion. In 1935 she established the journal New Times and Ethiopian News, which publicized and supported Haile Selassie’s anti-colonial campaign. With her son, Pankhurst went to live in Ethiopia in 1956 and died in Addis Ababa in 1960.

Published works:

The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910 (New York: Sturgis & Walton Co., 1911)

Housing & the Workers’ Revolution: Housing in Capitalist Britain and Bolshevik Russia (London: Workers’ Socialist Federation, 1919)

Rebel Ireland (London: Workers’ Socialist Federation, 1919)

Soviet Russia as I Saw it (London: Workers’ Dreadnought Publishers, 1921)

Communism and its Tactics, ed. by Mark A. S. Shipway (Edinburgh: Mark Shipway, [1921-2] 1983).

The Truth About the Oil War (London Dreadnought Publishers, 1922)

Writ on a Cold Slate (London: Dreadnought Publishers, 1922)

India and the Earthly Paradise (Bombay: ‘Bombay Chronicle’ Press, Sunshine Publishing House, 1926)

Delphos: The Future of International Language (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., nd (1928?))

Is an International Language Possible? A Lecture, etc. (London: Morland Press, 1928)

Save the Mothers: A Plea for Measures to Prevent the Annual Loss, etc. (London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930)

The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (London: Longmans & Co., 1931)

The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England During the First World War (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1932)

The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst: The Suffragette Struggle for Women’s Citizenship (London: Werner Laurie, 1935)

British Policy in Eastern Ethiopia: The Ogaden and the Reserved Area (Woodford Green, 1945)

British Policy in Eritrea and Northern Ethiopia (Woodford Green, 1945)

Education in Ethiopia (Woodford Green: ‘New Times & Ethiopia News’ Books, 1946)

The Ethiopian People: Their Rights and Progress (Woodford Green: ‘New Times and Ethiopia News’ Books, 1946)

Ex-Italian Somaliland (London: Watts & Co., 1951)

Eritrea on the Eve: The Past and Future of Italy’s ‘First-Born’ Colony, Ethiopia’s Ancient Sea Province (Woodford Green: ‘New Times & Ethiopia News’ Books, 1952)

Why Are We Destroying the Ethiopian Ports? With An Historical Retrospect, 1557-1952, etc. (Woodford Green ‘New Times and Ethiopia News’ Books, 1952)

(With Richard Pankhurst) Ethiopia and Eritrea: The Last Phase of the Reunion Struggle, 1941-1952, etc. (Woodford Green: Lalibela House, 1953)

Ethiopia: A Cultural History (Woodford Green: Lalibela House, 1955)

Example:

Pankhurst, Sylvia, India and the Earthly Paradise (Bombay: ‘Bombay Chronicle’ Press, Sunshine Publishing House, 1926), pp. 636-8

Date of birth:

05 May 1882

Connections:

Herbert Asquith, R. N. Chaudry, James Connolly, Silvio Erasmus Corio, Walter Crane, Clemens Palme Dutt, Rajani Palme Dutt, Keir Hardie, C. L. R. James, George Lansbury, V. I. Lenin, Adela Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline Pankhurst, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, F. M. Sayal, Haile Selassie, Norah Smythe.

Communist Party of Great Britain, East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELF, later renamed the Women’s Suffrage Federation, and then the Workers' Socialist Federation), Independent Labour Party, Women’s International League, Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), Women’s World Committee against War and Fascism.

Contributions to periodicals:

Ethiopia Observer

New Times and Ethiopian News

Women’s Dreadnought (renamed Workers’ Dreadnought)

Extract:

In the days to come peoples, differing as they do, in diet, costume and habits, in work and recreation, under the influence of climate and natural conditions, will serve each other, learn from each other, and enjoy each other’s variety free from the hatreds born of the present economic rivalries. When the Northman of the future confronts the people of the far East or South, he will feel, neither the mingled fear and contempt of the exploiter of a weaker and more numerous race, nor the jealous hatred of the worker who fears the lower paid competitor will steal his job.

And they who today, by reason of class or race are oppressed and exploited, will commingle as friends and comrades with the descendants of those who were once their conquerors and foes.

Whilst we must work for Swaraj as a necessary step in the evolution of the peoples of India, and one which leaves them more free than now to unravel their own problems, we must recognise that this is but one step on the road by which they and all peoples must travel. Before us all lies one hope and one goal: mutuality. Whilst competition and exploitation are the basis of the social organism, the expulsion of the foreign exploitation simply means the growth of the native exploitation.

Our goal is the end of all exploitation: the world-wide abundance, mutuality and fraternity of the Earthly Paradise.

Secondary works:

Alem-Ayehu, G., ‘Reflections on the Life and Work of Sylvia Pankhurst: The Ethiopian dimension’ (priv. coll. and private information, 2004 [S. Ayling])

Banks, O., The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists, Vol. 1. (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1985)

Bullock, I and Pankhurst, R. (eds), Sylvia Pankhurst: From Artist to Anti-Fascist (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992)

Davis, M., Sylvia Pankhurst: A Life in Radical Politics (London: Pluto Press, 1999)

Dodd, K. (ed.), A Sylvia Pankhurst Reader (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993)

Hannam, J., ‘Pankhurst, (Estelle) Sylvia (1882-1960)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2007), [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37833]

Harrison, S., Sylvia Pankhurst: Citizen of the World (London: Hornbeam Publishing, 2009)

Mitchell, D., The Fighting Pankhursts: A Study in Tenacity (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967)

Pankhurst, R., Sylvia Pankhurst: Artist and Crusader: An Intimate Portrait (London: Paddington Press, 1979)

Pankhurst, S., ‘Sylvia Pankhurst’, in Myself When Young, by Famous Women of To-day, ed. by E. A. M. Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith (London: Frederick Muller, 1938), pp. 259-312

Rama Rau, Dhanvanthi, An Inheritance: The Memoirs of Dhanvanthi Rama Rau (London: Heinemann, 1977)

Romero, P. W., E. Sylvia Pankhurst: Portrait of a Radical (London: Yale University Press, 1987)

Schreuder, M. W. H., and Schrevel, Women, Suffrage, and Politics: The Papers of Sylvia Pankhurst, 1882-1960, from the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam (Reading: Adam Matthew, 1991)

Tickner, L., The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907-1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1987)

Winslow, B., Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Political Activism (London: UCL Press, 1996)

Wright, P., ‘The Stone Bomb’, London Review of Books (23 August 2001)

Relevance:

The passage quoted above both articulates Sylvia Pankhurst’s anti-colonial and anti-racist endorsement of the Indian campaign for self-rule; and indicates the wider idealistic Communist and utopian contexts within which she situated the swaraj movement, and which inspired and informed her commitment to promoting this particular cause.

Archive source:

Correspondence and papers, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam

Correspondence, Women’s Library, London

Correspondence with Society of Authors, Add. MSS 56769-56771, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence with the Independent Labour Party, British Library of Political and Economic Science

Letters to David Lloyd George, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to the Manchester Guardian, John Rylands, University of Manchester

Correspondence with William Gillies, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester

Correspondence with Ada Lois James, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison

Correspondence with F. W. Pethick-Lawrence, Trinity College, Cambridge

City of birth:

Manchester